Nature: sweet, sour, astringent, warm

Enters: Large Intestine, Stomach, Spleen

Actions: Astringes the large intestine; stops diarrhea; stops bleeding; promotes wound healing.

Indications:
• Yang deficiency cold: chronic diarrhea, dysentery, especially with blood and mucus (not for damp-heat) or chronic uterine bleeding, excessive menstruation, leukorrhea, bleeding prolapsed rectum.
• Topical: for bleeding from trauma, chronic non-healing sores, weeping damp sores.
• Usually calcined before use.
• Kaolin/kaolinite, one form of clay used as this herb is where the “Kao” in the popular diarrhea remedy Kaopectate came from (the “pect” part came from pectin). Kaopectate is now bismuth subsalicylate.
• The two main forms of clay used as this medicine, kaolinite and halloysite both have the same basic chemical structure: Al2Si2O5(OH)4. As 1:1 “alumino-silicate clay minerals,” they are rich sources of aluminum, which makes Chi shi zhi probably not safe for long term consumption, due to the potential neurotoxic role of aluminum. It may even be worth retiring from the contemporary Chinese medicinal pharmacopaeia.
Hong-Yen Hsu (Oriental Materia Medica): Anti-diarrheal, absorbs abnormally fermented food in the intestines and protects intestinal mucosa; hemostatic.
Subhuti Dharmananda: May help antidote mercury poisoning.

Dose: 9-30g